First camping trip of the season

Thought I’d blog the trip in it’s entirety rather than break up the days.

We first heard of the Sustainability Centre two years ago when we went to their Sussed It fair – (I’ve just been and read that post and been astounded at how much I’ve changed and how much D and S have grown, and enjoyed reading the post directly below it too :). )We meant to go last year but it rained heavily but I had it in my diary for this year again. Ady’s planned QVC appearance on Saturday was cancelled so we ended up at the beginning of last week with an unexpectedly late free weekend. I remembered that they offer camping at the Sustainability Centre so we booked that for Friday and Saturday night and decided to have a close-to-home-dry-run with the new tent, camping mats and sleeping bags.

It’s less than 50 miles away and with no traffic around we were there in about 45 minutes. The hostel officially closes at 8pm and that is where we needed to report to but I had emailed and said we would be there around 8pm. We arrived at the same time as another family so I chatted to the woman for a while while her partner went off to check in. We only talked for a few minutes and Ady was amazed at how much information I came back with about her which made me worry I’d interrogated her rather than chatting :lol:. Her partner didn’t come back to the carpark though so I dashed off to the hostel too. There was someone lounging around watching telly who offered to show me where to go even though he was just a hostel guest and then we met another lad coming to gather firewood and a fire for the people I’d just seen so he took me over in the end. The campsite manager, Hazel, did lean out of an upstairs window and blow kisses at me in welcome though and promise to come over to us later, which she did. I liked her a lot; she worked the short sundress with cut off shorts worn with wellies look well as she tramped around the campsite pushing wheelbarrows full of firewood, stopping every so often to do cartwheels. She must have been about 40 but she was just lovely, full of fun and joy :).

I guess we were at our actual pitch by about 830pm and we were pitched, unpacked and beds set up by about 945pm which isn’t bad at all. But the people opposite were like a well oiled machine and were long since sitting infront of their lit fire eating their cooked meal before we’d done which made us feel a little amateur. There must be a knack to getting dome tents up that we’ve yet to master as we always seem to struggle with that first bit of getting the four corners square and I definitely couldn’t pitch it on my own, which is frustrating as I could get the smaller dome tent we’ve used before up on my own. We’d also tried to go slightly diagonally across the pitch and then realised it wouldn’t work so had to walk the tent round to correct that. All good practice though I guess. There is a huge Asda just five miles up the road open 24 hours so we nipped back there for various bits of food (another slight flaw in our plans, we should have taken first night stuff with us really. It was a bit horrid trailing two tired children round a supermarket at 11pm on a Friday night with us all utterly filthy, sweaty and slightly fraught wasn’t a lovely experience.). Back to the campsite and I settled Davies and Scarlett in bed while Ady cooked burgers. By midnight we were nicely chilled out and had a lovely end to the evening chatting and enjoying the peace with occasional owls calling across the night.

Saturday morning we had a lazy start with sausage and bacon and toast and lots of tea. The campsite is usually most of the fields there I think but that was all reserved for the Green Fair happening on Sunday so there were just the bays available – about 8 of them sort of self contained with a high bank around them, large enough for a big tent and various tranglings like cooking and eating area. The facilities are basic – showers and loos up at the hostel and the centre with use of the hostel kitchen and fridge space if you want it, but it’s a bit of a walk back up there to fetch stuff. The price totally reflects this though – we paid £28 for the two nights and actually we then didn’t need to pay to get into the Green Fair on Sunday which would have been about £12. We were looked in on several times to check we were ok and offered all sorts of things on the Friday night – help to put the tent up, food, drink etc. – the difference between there and Kessingland couldn’t have been greater…

We had the first of many walks round the woods and then headed back to Asda for food for lunch and dinner. While we were there we got a cool box and a bag of ice. I was amazed that not only did it manage to keep things cool for a full 24 hours plus it also actually chilled things next to the ice so we drank beer and cider that evening that had condensation on the bottles – oh the luxury :). I walked up to the hostel to pay for the pitch and buy some firewood. They sell sacks of logs and the use of a big metal dish on legs to have your campfire for a fiver. Our neighbours who later returned and packed up as quickly and efficiently as they’d set up also left half a bag of their firewood so we used that too.

We spent the afternoon going on various short walks, we saw a huge grass snake at the pond – must have been over 4 foot long and was the first grass snake Ady or I had ever seen. We also walked through the green burial site area and had long and interesting chats about choice of funerals. I really like the green burial idea and we were particularly taken with the idea of growing fruit plants or trees over the grave and decorating the grave with pretty things made to remember you by instead of cold headstones with dry bible quotes on them. Each to their own of course but I think it would be a lovely place to go and visit and think about and remember someone you have lost. We headed off in various combinations with Scarlett and I going on several mini-walks while Davies and Ady played several rounds of Ben 10 top trumps. Ady and I got to sit and chat while the children wandered off a fair bit too, we gave them fairly wide boundaries and let them go. We also wandered amoung the people setting up things ready for the green fair and met some very interesting people including the man who carved wood and errected his stand using a frame of sticks he’d found and adapted for the use with loads of y shaped end verticals supporting the horizontals. He was wearing a pair of wooden boots with metal toe caps and talked to us about bare fist welsh mountain fighting and shin kicking contests. He was utterly charmed by Scarlett and then delighted to learn Davies’ name and it’s origin as he was a welshman but to my shame I couldn’t reply to his torrent of welsh as mine only extends to ‘hello’ and counting to ten (and infact I tend to wobble around five and often end up with 8, 9 and 10 in german, but don’t tell anyone!). I then realised that although Davies and Scarlett know Grandad is from Wales and grew up there they hadn’t realised there is a welsh language – and one that Grandad can speak . I imagine they will be hounding him for new words now :).

Davies and Scarlett gathered various sticks and leaves to use as kindling and Davies lit the fire about 7pm and they toasted marshmallows on it. We finished the Famous Five story we’ve been reading and they went off to bed. They took forever to get to sleep though – being on the same floor of the house let alone the same room, let alone sharing a camping mat is a huge novelty for them with their seperate bedrooms on different floors at home so we are always in full on ‘sleepover mode’ when camping with giggling and playing with torches til late. We enjoyed watching the shadows of people moving about in the beer tent infront of us and listening to the far off muffled voices along with night noises and star gazing.

Sunday morning we all slept in a little later and listened to the countdown to the fair opening at 10am over the tannoy system, the testing of the sound system in the live music tent and the general hubbub of it all getting set up. The fair was fairly small – probably 30 stalls in all. Some were craft workshops and demos, some free,some pay for and some stalls were just selling things. We enjoyed the children’s tent and Davies and Scarlett made a dragonfly each with lace scraps and pipecleaners, they drew round their footprints and did one with environmentally friendly pictures and one with bad for the environment things – Davies had things like solar panels and self sufficiency with growing / rearing your own food, harvesting rainwater etc in his good foot and leaving the tap running while you clean your teeth, burning fossil fuels and dropping litter in his bad foot. Surprised at how much of that he has learnt without being preached to actually. Scarlett’s was less in line with common ecofriendly ideas but did have many pretty flowers in it :). They made chalk house gods – that was what they were calling them on the stand and they were to protect your home but I’ve not been able to find anything on google about such ideas – which involved staining chalk surfaces with leaf or flower rubbing then carving into the picture with a flint tool. Not something I’d be desperate to do myself (chalk, eww!) but they enjoyed it. They made bat rings with sequins and other sparkly things and got to stroke some real rescued bats, we bought local honey made from pollen from starflowers, watched some straw bale house building, chatted to the woman from this ancient farm who was incredibly enthusiastic about HE and we’ll aim to visit soon.

We watched a very cool camp crafts talk about making fire and the children had a go at making sparks. I don’t know that our camping trips are that extreme or indeed without one of those clicky gas lighters but just incase I know about bark from the silver birch, batteries and wire wool, cotton wool and vaseline and newspaper soaked in candlewax techniques now :). We watched Morris dancers and Scarlett and I copied some of the stick clicking bits with some sticks we picked up, we wore daisy chains in our hair (well S and I did, Ady would have struggled and D was less keen), Davies and I listened to two sessions of a drumming storyteller and got up to sing and dance along with parts of his tale. We chatted to four women spinning wool with spinning wheels and one using a drop spindle for ages.

We went back to our tent for lunch which was now behind the beer and live music tent, across from straw bale house building and infront of the shamanic drum healing area. Ady popped back at one point and found someone sitting on our chairs patiently waiting to see what would be happening at our tent :lol:. Everyone who passed wanted to know what we were talking about / demonstrating / there for so we chatted to loads of people. We had bacon sandwiches and listened to the music, singing along in places. They played one song which sounded so much like Jack and Diane but wasn’t that we had to sing over it with those words instead and then when they played one of their own tracks we didn’t know we sang American Pie. Two large glasses of wine probably helped with this ;).

Scarlett had made friends with every single dog she met, first asking their owner if they were friendly and could she stroke them (the dog, not the owner, although I suspect it will be a useful tactic for her socially in years to come :lol:) and then set up a bowl and water and called all dog owners over as they passed for their dogs to come and have a drink. She was in her element and wandered off for a while with one boy and his small dog as he let her take the lead and walk it.

The fair finished at 5pm and we very leisurely packed up as we couldn’t get our car down through the centre until after that (there was a no cars on site rule so once unpacked the car had to go back to the carpark) while Davies taught Scarlett how to throw the frisbee we’d brought. We’d tried to play all four of us the night before but she’d been very resistent to being shown how to throw it when I’d tried to teach her. We were all packed up by about 630pm and home about an hour later via McDonalds for the childrens’ tea. They had a bath and story from me while Ady unpacked the car.

We’ll definitely go back next year and it would be a great place for a small group (maybe up to 4 families) to camp together, particularly on the Green Fair weekend with a trip to the ancient farm on the Saturday. It’s so close to home I doubt we’d visit otherwise but it was a fab place to camp. We were really blessed with fantastic weather and although the tent, sleeping bags and camping mats all did really well I guess it wasn’t much of a test really. Ah well, guess we’ll have to go camping again very soon to test them further ;).

Pics are on flickr but here a couple of faves:

S and a real version of the soft toy dog she carted round all weekend calling ‘Timmy’.This one was called Romeo

fitting right in

making fire

our set up

Firestarter

Peeping out from trees – D is hardest to spot